Solitude Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Cease speaking of enemies when an achievement can kindle a great light. Solitude will transmit the message better than the murmurs of crowds.

Nicholas Roerich

Only what has been conceived in solitude, face to face with God, endures — whether one is a believer or not.

Our secret thoughts are rarely heard except in secret. No man knows what conscience is until he understands what solitude can teach him concerning it.

Come let us mock at the good
That fancied goodness might be gay,
And sick of solitude
Might proclaim a holiday:
Wind shrieked— and where are they?

William Butler Yeats

There is no solitude in the world like that of the big city.

Kathleen Norris

If you want inner peace, find it in solitude, not speed, and if you would find yourself, look to the land from which you came and to which you go.

Stewart L. Udall

In solitude
What happiness? who can enjoy alone,
Or all enjoying, what contentment find?

The heart which has no agenda but God's is the heart at leisure from itself. Its emptiness is filled with the Love of God. Its solitude can be turned into prayer.

Elisabeth Elliot

We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or an old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

Wallace Stevens

He needed his solitude at times, but he wasn't a hermit. He did a lot of socializing. Sometimes I think it was like he was storing up company for the times when he knew nobody would be around.

I love tranquil solitude,
And such society
As is quiet, wise, and good;
Between thee and me
What difference? but thou dost possess
The things I seek, not love them less.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.

James Russell Lowell

And here Bartleby makes his home, sole spectator of a solitude which he has seen all populous- a sort of innocent and transformed Marius brooding among the ruins of Carthage!

Herman Melville

My Beloved is the mountains,
The solitary wooded valleys,
The strange islands,
The roaring torrents,
The whisper of the amorous gales;
The tranquil night
At the approaches of the dawn,
The silent music,
The murmuring solitude,
The supper which revives, and enkindles love.

John of the Cross

And it came to me then. That we were wonderful traveling companions but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal in their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they're nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we'd be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing.

Haruki Murakami

Not only is there no question of solitude, but in the long run we may not choose our company.

Elizabeth Bowen

Iron, after it is converted into gold by the touch of philosopher's stone, may be kept under the ground or thrown into a rubbish heap; it will always remain gold and will not return to its former condition. Similar is the state of the man whose soul has touched, even once, the feet of the Almighty Lord. Whether he dwells in the bustle of the world, or in the solitude of the forest, nothing ever contaminates him.

We replace God as best we can; for every god is good, provided he perpetuates in eternity our desire for a crucial solitude...

Wildness had never been a part of her life. Home, work, home, work. That's all her life had consisted of, really. She'd told Maddox that she'd been glad for her solitude, bu the truth was, there were times she'd been starved for touch. Any touch.

To build a road is so much simpler than to think of what the country really needs. A roadless marsh is seemingly as worthless to the alphabetical conservationist as an undrained one was to the empire-builders. Solitude, the one natural resource still undowered of alphabets, is so far recognized as valuable only by ornithologists and cranes.
Thus always does history, whether of marsh or market place, end in paradox. The ultimate value in these marshes is wildness, and the crane is wildness incarnate. But all conservation of wildness is self-defeating, for to cherish we must see and fondle, and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish.

You grow your best thoughts in silence, solitude, and meditation. When you relax and think deeply, you are giving your inmost powers their best opportunity to disclose themselves.

Grenville Kleiser

Solitude is not the absence of company, but the moment when our soul is free to speak to us and help us decide what to do with our life.

In silence, we have an opportunity to reflect, listen, and gain new insights about ourselves. In silence, we can think, feel, and most important of all, breathe. When you seek guidance, understanding, clarity, or peace of mind, the first step is to master the art of silence and to rethink the value of solitude.

But solitude is sadness.' 'Yes; it is sadness. Life, however, has worse than that. Deeper than melancholy lies heart-break.

Charlotte Brontë

Solitude is the place where we can connect with profound bonds that are deeper than the emergency bonds of fear and anger.